Considering all that we have learned about monsters over the course of the semester, what are your final thoughts? How do vampires and monsters represent the times in which they are created and what do you feel are the correct monsters of our time?
The true monsters of our time are those who, as the world is slowly opening its eyes to the deep roots of inequality embedded in the earth, oppress and exploit others for greed. Their disregard for the rest of humanity effectively makes them monsters. Our once traditional monsters such as vampires have become synonymous for being both a misfit in modern society, someone who has lost their way and needs redemption, and someone who is still capable of humanity and love. As discussed in class, Blacula is a product of the Blaxploitation genre of film that followed the civil rights movement. The wealthy, educated African Prince still fell prey to racism. Mamuwalde was turned into a vampire against his will as a metaphor for slavery, but used his power to fight back against oppressive system that has restrained and harmed him and the woman he loves. Another contemporary film The Lost Boys, besides being referenced in its successors Buffy the Vampire Slayer and What We Do in the Shadows, was a response to rising divorce rates and socio-politics of the Reagan Era. The monsters represented the fear of losing nuclear family bonds. Director Joel Schumacher has said the film “is, in a way, about the fear we have of the Other—those who live outside of the mainstream.” The vampires are attractive, unruly, gay teenage boys whose codependence and relationships with each other is literally blown up by the proper, stable parental dynamic. But the current wave of vampire cinema has given us Twilight, showing a protective, albeit possessive, nature a monster can have for a human. What We Do in the Shadows portrays vampires as foolish, campy, admittedly reckless, but ultimately harmless. The Transfiguration maintains an element of horror with an introverted outcast vampire than can still take on gangs to save his love. The monsters we have are not traditional, because our society no longer fears the unknown. We aren't being told to conform to society's standards, as was the purpose of the folkloric vampire. We aren't afraid of losing cultural values, like the Eastern immigrant Dracula said we should. We are not even afraid of homosexuality or independent women or immigrants. So what are we afraid of? Considering the state of the world and monster fiction today, we are most afraid of forgetting how to love one another and losing the thread of humanity that binds all people together. We have all seen a monster film at some point, but what was memorable about it? Who or what was the monster and what do you think the role of that monster was?
By far the most memorable monster film for me is actually the animated series Castlevania. The show has a myriad of vampire characters with diverse and colorful personalities, morals, appearances, and roles in the narrative. The season one and two primary antagonist is Dracula while the secondary antagonist is Carmilla. Carmilla is one of Dracula's generals, yet she is secretly trying to undermine and usurp him. Through these two, we are able to see the dichotomy of human emotion. Dracula's love for his human wife was so strong that when she was killed, he decided to destroy all of humanity against her wishes. On the other hand, Carmilla's heatless, unemotional distaste for humanity makes her simply want to turn all humans into livestock. Dracula's role is to show the dangers of too much passion and how easily they can destroy everything good, while Carmilla's role is to show that monsters and evil can appear in many forms. She has a fearsome reputation despite her femininity, as the vampires in this show appear to be unconservative. Still, she uses her sexuality to manipulate others when she can, which is something we never see the male vampires do. I do not think the show follows all of the principles of vampire cinema laid out in Weinstock's Introduction to Vampire Cinema. Specifically, Principle 2: The vampires are always more interesting than those who pursue it. While I would normally agree with this statement in a cut and dry manner, it feels much more subjective in this show where our 'heroes' are are as layered, harsh, and complicated as the vampires. The greatest testimony to this is the dhampir character Alucard, Dracula's son with his mortal wife. He wants to honor his mother and knows his father is wrong; he never strays from his righteous path. And yet, consistently, we learn more about him in categories that should define a vampire yet make him different and more agreeable- his want for companionship, love for his family, journey with sexuality, and selfless altruism. These all make him not a monster, considerably human, and just as contextually rich as the vampires he is fighting. That being said, the show is an excellent example proving the other 6 principles quite well. Technology plays a tremendous role in exacerbating or aiding the parties, nearly every vampire is inevitably queer, and Dracula will always haunt his son. When I think of vampires and literary monsters, I think of traditional or stereotypical monsters. Like most of the class, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and Jekyll & Hyde embody the idea of "literary monsters". Considering the flexibility of the term monster, and literary, some less expected characters some to mind as well, such as Medusa and Grendel. The title of monster and their similar functions in a story is not reserved to the gothic literature genre. Monsters as a whole in more recent centuries have played the part of exemplifying a negative aspect of humanity and taking it to the extreme, which is what makes them sub-human in the first place. The role of Frankenstein's monster was to be a personification of Victor's impulses and ideas. He is essentially his child, and Victor probably the monster's parent in a more pure and literal sense because he personally created each part of him, going as far to refer to the act of creation as "time spent in painful labour," though readers do not know the gritty and gory details. Shelley also uses the monster to make a point on how he was not made to be evil or born evil, but rather shaped this way by his interactions with others and how he was treated. This was not a popular theme at the time, seeing that religion of the era consisted of the notion that humans were born evil, and that someone's morality could not be changed and was predetermined. The consistent message from others that he is a monster both creates and enforces the notion in Frankenstein Jr's psyche that he must be a monster.
What is the connection between monsters, folklore, folk groups and narrative? How can we understand those concepts within our contemporary society?
Folklore in a society or culture is the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community passed through generations by word of mouth. These communities are referred to as folk groups. A folk group shares something in common that makes them distinctive and gives them their identity. Folk groups can be based on such elements as ethnicity, tribe, religion, region, occupation, family, age, or gender. Folklore in our contemporary society manifests in the form of campfire stories, chain mail, and the like. Until the internet social media existed, folklore was communicated by word of mouth and spread by print media, radio, and television. Stories travelled more slowly, evolving as they were told and retold within and between communities, leading to the co-existence of multiple variants of the same tale. Traditional folklore still exists in children's stories such as Goldilocks and Cinderella, and modern iterations can also be found and propagated like Creepypasta forums on the internet. Narratives use monsters to reveal tensions, inconsistencies, and gaps in society. Monsters help authors draw attention to the construction of narrative itself, and to the agency or performance of the story. The most notable difference between contemporary society and monsters of old folklore is that popular culture sympathizes with the monster's goals and social scrutiny. Modern monsters have notably human like characteristics and powers that are even desirable at times. They aim to assimilate and blend in with existing society. Monsters manifest numerous fears and taboos including violence, ridicule, destruction of nature, oppression, violation of gender roles, promiscuity, attempted immortality, prolonged youth, and artificial creation. The term monster, to me, invokes the idea of someone or something that acts evil and does harm, whether on purpose or not. I do not automatically think of typical popular halloween costumes, such as vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, and would even go a step further and say that these fictional creatures are not inherently monstrous in the same way humans are not predetermined good or evil. By far, the monsters with the most cultural capital in our current western culture include much of the aforementioned creatures, yet they may not even be used in the classic definition of monster either. Some of the most popular versions of these fictional monsters have them in positions of moral ambiguity or outright protagonists, such as Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. They maintain a solid grip on popular culture with easily replicable tropes and a consistent lucrative audience. In addition, they usually serve as an outlet to discuss crises of character like redemption, murder, and other topics that do not translate in realistic fiction. But the most popular iteration of the “Monster” in the past decade has been the extraterrestrial. A growing fear of mass immigration and loss of cultural identity has spurned this type of monster, the alien, in children's media and award winning films alike. As society changes, society’s monsters change with it.
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AuthorSoumya Jaiswal Archives
April 2021
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